I remember that post!  It was very interesting.  I've been thinking about the union-busting industry ever since.  I think there are a lot of things unions can do to organize online and to counter-act union busting.

I also have a pet theory that there are a lot of employers who might be "persuadable" on the topic of union-busting.  That is, there are a number of employers who would be willing to listen to something like a union cooperation expert, who could help them work with a union to maximize profits while improving working conditions, or something like that.  I'd even venture a guess that union cooperation could become its own little cottage industry.  But, I think it's more or less wishful thinking.

Well, there's AFL-CIO and Change to Win, for starters (and plenty of internationals have their own blogs.)  There's Working life, which seems to focus much more on politics than on issues within the labor movement.  They have a diary section too.  There's also LabourStart, which is an excellent news source about goings-on within the labor movement generally.  And American Rights at Work, while it doesn't publish a blog, does have a pretty good "news clips" feed.

Have fun!

Though it isn't an active blog I've long been a fan of YouAreWorthMore.org which is run by UFCW Local 789 out of St. Paul, Minnesota.  They actually have a Union Rep that answers questions from anyone who posts one the website!  This tiny little local union also started up a website for Target workers and for Borders Books employees (though the IWW took over the Borders site apparently).  I know several other national unions have sites devoted to organizing drives and corporate campaigns but they are typically NOT community orientated like the sites above.    

I'd really like to see the AFL-CIO and the CTW Federation build some sort of an online community.   The blogs are a good first step (the AFL blog JUST RECENTLY started allowing comments) but not nearly enough.  It would be nice to have a message forum and a diary community as well.  Unfortunately, the labor movement has an institutional history that includes squelching dissent and controlling the message which is why I think you see such a resistance to transparency and online communities on their own websites.      

Thanks for joining us here!

One thing you could do is somehow incorporate PurpleOcean into the Change to Win site, or replicate that functionality in a high-profile way.  As I mentioned above, it's a great site with good features, it just needs some attention and a bit more promoting.

Perhaps unrelated to this, check out my recent post on The Front Door of the Labor Movement.  A brief survey of some prominent union sites showed that the "Join a union" section was generally not user-friendly or helpful to potential members who might want to join a union.  Over at Communicate or Die, Matt Noyes pointed me to the UE page, which, while not graphically slick or very technologically high-end, is my idea of a really good "Join us" page.

I agree - UnionFacts is pretty despicable.  They have a very generous PR budget, which is probably the main reason they've got such a high profile.

You make a good point about having a pro-union site which is not union-affiliated in the same way - I think that undoubtedly would be a useful resource.  One thing I worry about, though, is that without a good PR budget, that kind of effort might not get the kind of traction that the center for union facts got.  I suppose they could operate under the radar by purchasing Google ad words and things like that, though.

I thought this post was very interesting, and when I do get around to writing up my "Organizing workers online" post, I'll certainly reference it.  Sounds like your effort was very successful - though it's too bad you eventually got banned.  I'm curious though: why not try and organize on MySpace?  They have a less restrictive policy about pseudonymous usernames.

Thanks for the post!